


The Fear of Falling Apart

by orphan_account



Category: teen wolf - Fandom
Genre: Breakup, Depressed Derek, Derek and Stiles understand each other, Friendship then romance then everything goes to hell, Jealousy, M/M, Not Beta Read, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-26
Updated: 2016-06-22
Packaged: 2018-04-06 07:41:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4213542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Derek was no stranger to feeling pain. After all, he had felt it for years after the fire. The deep, palpable pain of losing a whole pack was enough to turn the once bright and humorous teen into a bitter and dull adult. But this pain was different. He supposed it was due to the fact that this loss wasn't one caused by death. It was caused by him. By his stupidity. By his temper. The loss of his partner, Stiles Stilinski, was completely and totally his fault. And while Stiles thrived and flourished without him by his side, Derek sunk deeper into depression and guilt. Death was more appealing to Derek than life. And Derek always liked the more appealing things in life...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter One

**Author's Note:**

> Title of the fic is taken from the P!ATD song This Is Gospel. Go give it a listen.

_The Night of Decisions_

  
Derek knew he fucked up.   
  
It was an instinctual thing, really. Knowing that you made a mistake so bad the whole course of your life would be changed because of it. And Derek hated that he had done it, but he couldn’t change things, and he had to keep going.   
  
The trouble was, it was hard to keep going. It was hard to be happy and to smile (not that he did that much before, anyway) when everything inside of him felt as if it had gone numb, as if every single ounce of happiness had left his body and nothing remained except the bitter shell of a man who had messed up and was paying the price for it.   
  
So it wasn’t hard, due to the way he felt inside, for Derek to come to the conclusion that he was depressed. He had struggled with depression for years, but the new wound made every single horrible thought he had thought after the Fire come back in a rushing wave, nauseating his stomach and making him want to sleep all day and cry all night (yes, Derek Hale cried; not often, but he did). Along with these old thoughts, new ones came. Ones that told him he was such a piece of shit for messing things up with Stiles, ones that told him he would never find someone better than the moled teenager, ones that told him life was meaningless now.   
  
Depression leads to a lot of things. Insomnia, stress, sickness, but the most common thing it’s known for is, well...suicide. Suicide, the conclusion of a whole lifetime by your own hands. Not by sickness or age or another human being. It’s you. You feel so small, so sad, so worthless that the only clear solution is to end everything and hope that the afterlife isn’t as bad as they make it out to be for people who weren’t the best or who didn’t do everything right.   
  
Tonight, Derek just hoped that it didn’t hurt. He was trying to escape the pain, after all.  
  
  
  
______________________________________________________________________________  
  
  
 _Two months before the Great Mistake_  
  
“Derek! C’mon! DerBear! Get your glorious ass out of bed!” Stiles’s voice rang in the wolf’s ears. Derek rubbed at his eyes as he sat up, looking at Stiles and letting out a soft yawn.   
  
“I don’t understand how someone who enjoys sleep so much can be this high energy in the morning.” Derek grumbled and let his legs go over the edge of the bed, his feet touching the cold floor of the loft.  
  
“You know you love it, babe.” Stiles kissed Derek’s cheek, letting his fingers gently run through Derek’s soft hair. He had this thing with Derek’s hair. It was the most amazing thing to Stiles and he could never help himself. He stroked it whenever he could. Derek had complained at first, but he was now used to it. And honestly, it felt nice. Comforting. An innocent gesture of affection that made Derek’s insides feel a bit warmer. “Now, come on. I bought us a breakfast from McDonald’s that lacks nutritional value but makes up for it with the amazing taste.”  
  


Derek’s eyes rolled but he climbed out of bed, going down to the kitchen with him. This loft, ever since Stiles and he had gotten together four months ago, it felt more like home. It was cozy and nice, with more appliances and furniture in it (Stiles had fought like hell to get the huge leather couch that now sat in the place of the old lumpy one). He liked it more than he thought he would. Entering the loft and not feeling like it was just the shell of a home was nice. He sat down at the table after he grabbed his egg McMuffin and hash brown, eating quietly and listening to Stiles ramble on about how the kid at the drive thru had been really nice even though it took forever and did Derek know if they were going to have a pack night this weekend? This happened a lot. Stiles would talk nonstop and Derek would just respond whenever he was asked a question. It was a good system, since Derek wasn’t a talker and Stiles hated silence more than he hated, well, hate.   
  
“Der?” Stiles got his attention, and he exited his cocoon of thought.   
  
“Yea?”   
  
His voice was a bit hesitant. “Would it be okay if I flaked on our date tonight? You know I love our nights out more than curly fries and blowjobs but the guys want to go to Jungle and celebrate Danny’s anniversary with Ethan and I don’t want to abandon them and -”  
  
Derek cut him off. “You can go, Stiles. It’s fine.”  
  
The teen’s face lit up. “Awesome! Hey, maybe you could come? I love seeing you in your skinny jeans.”  
  
Derek shrugged. “I’ll think about it. It’s not fun to be a werewolf in a night club, though. You can’t get drunk and the noises make your ears hurt like hell.”  
  
Stiles laughed, finishing his little breakfast and cleaning up the trash once Derek was finished, too. He wrapped his arms around the other’s neck when he stood, leaning up to give the broody werewolf a peck on the lips. “You know that you’re the most amazing thing that has ever happened to me, right?”   
  
Derek smiled and he kissed the other once more. “Yea. Yea. I do. And you’re the most amazing thing that’s ever happened to me.”   
  
And that, well, that was true. After the Fire, Derek really didn’t have a purpose in life and it was hard for him to feel anything other than a crippling sadness and anger towards the people that had taken his whole world away. The only the person he ever spoke to for years was Laura. And then Laura had died. She had brutally murdered by the hands of one of their own kind, their own family, and the one light Derek had in life had been put out. He only had darkness and numb feelings inside of him. He didn’t have joy. He didn’t have a reason to get up every morning. He just...did.

  
And then Stiles came along. Spastic, goofy, loving, Stiles. The Stiles who had spent the night of the anniversary of the Fire with him, telling him stories of Claudia Stilinski, reminding Derek that others knew the pain he felt. That while Derek had lost a lot more than him, Stiles had still lost and he had still grieved in the same way. Derek believed that the romantic feelings he felt for him had started on this night five months ago. A month after, Derek had been waiting for Stiles in the rain on the doorstep of his house after school. He looked down and broken, but he really felt nervous and scared on the inside. When he was ushered in and given a towel, he spoke and the words were poetic. They were beautiful and they truly came from the heart. The words were personal and Derek doesn’t like repeating them for anyone other than Stiles because they were only intended for the pale teen’s ears. When he had finished speaking, Stiles had stared at him with those doe-like amber eyes and stepped forward, kissing Derek gently on the lips and saying, “I don’t know how to say what I feel about you, Derek. But I can show it. And I can do everything within my power to be your Batman, to be the man you need. To be your happiness, even though I know that it’s hard to be happy after all of the shit you’ve been through. So I’m going to kiss you again, Sourwolf, and you’re going to go upstairs with me, change into some sweats, and let me snuggle the shit out of you.”

 

They did kiss, and they spent hours cuddling and talking that night. They had been a “power couple” every since then. They argued, yea. Derek got jealous easily, especially when he smelled someone else’s scent on Stiles. Stiles was bad at taking things seriously. Sometimes Derek just needed the quiet and Stiles had a hard time dealing with that, but they were genuinely happy together. Their issues paled in comparison to the joy that they brought one another.   
  
So when the Great Mistake occurred, no one would be prepared for the outcome.


	2. Chapter Two

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Some more contemplative thoughts from Derek and a memory (I know it's tagged, but please, please keep in mind that Derek is heavily contemplating taking his own life, so if this is a trigger for you, PLEASE do not read).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so. For those who've read this story before, you're probably a tad bit confused. I wrote this a while back and I did not like the way my first attempt at the second chapter was structured, and I had no real goal for where this was going to go. So, I've changed this and decided there's going to be five chapters. Chapters three, four, and five will be much more meaty, so I apologize for two essentially being of a set-up for those. The Great Mistake will be revealed and I may have that chapter being just that, so if it's not very long or you're disappointed by the lack of flashbacks, I apologize. I'm hoping this time I will have more of a work I can be proud of and one you guys can still enjoy. Thanks for reading, and remember that I appreciate any and all kinds of feedback.
> 
> And now to the emotions...

_ The Night of Decisions... _

 

Derek had family who had taken their own lives before.   
  
It was one of those things that pack didn’t talk about much. He knew why. Death killed the pack members impacted by it. Not physically, no, but that feeling of having someone that you loved more than words could ever describe...that feeling of, well, losing something on a spiritual level...it was hell. 

And yet, as he stared down the cliff, knowing all of this information about how he would hurt his pack and knowing the fact that not even wolves could fully recover from a broken neck,  **if** he survived...he still wanted to. He still wanted to die. Even if it meant putting these innocent teenagers through more pain than they had already been through.    
  
This was selfish. This was inconsiderate. This wasn’t right. But Derek was tired; tired of dealing with this heavy weight of emptiness that constantly followed him, tired of having to force faux smiles and pretend that he didn’t hurt without Stiles. That the magnitude of the Great Mistake wasn’t eating him from the inside out. Perhaps this had just been the tipping point, and somewhere, deep down inside, Derek had wanted to die from the moment Kate Argent had killed every single source of happiness he had left (aside from Laura and Peter, although one was brutally murdered by the other and the one he was left with was a fucking psychopathic killer). Or even before Kate Argent; he shuddered at this thought, remembering the feeling of a limp, empty body in his hands, his own cries still ringing in his ears as his glowing eyes went from a strong, proud gold to a cold, empty blue and the body of his beloved girlfriend sat before him on the ground.

Derek had lived one those tragic lives people watched on Lifetime or read about in a book. Shakespeare would’ve loved to delve into the life of the Hale family. Him being a bad human being certainly contributed to some of his tragedies, didn’t it? If he hadn’t trusted Kate, if he hadn’t wanted to turn Paige, if he hadn’t....

If he hadn’t hurt Stiles.

* * *

 

_ One month before the Great Mistake… _

 

“What did he do?”    
  
Scott’s tone was low and quiet, knowing that a, Derek could hear him, and b, getting angry would just set Derek off.   
  
Derek sighed and dragged a hand through his hair, knowing that if he could get headaches, he’d have a bitch of one right now. “I told him that I didn’t want him in this battle. He gets hurt when he charges in without thinking, only bringing that fucking bat with him.” Derek hated that thing. Seriously. If there was one thing he could get rid of in this world, he wouldn’t choose world hunger, wars, violence. No, he’d get rid of that bat.

“So he went off to fight as soon as you said that.”   
  
Derek nodded his head solemnly, closing his eyes and taking a few deep breaths. He needed to stay calm. He was incredibly worried about his partner and angry that he was so indignant that he had to go against every single thing Derek said, even when it was for his benefit. “Yea. Yea, he did.”   
  
Scott bit at his cheek nervously, clearly trying to think of some kind of game plan for this situation. Derek wouldn’t ever forget how much Scott had changed in the past few years. He had gone from a weak, scared Beta with a goofy smile and an affinity for the things that would get him killed in life to a strong  **true** Alpha with honor and integrity. Still, when situations like this would rise up, Derek saw through the shell. He could peer through the cracks and see that Scott was still terrified. No kid should have this level of responsibility, and Derek felt for him. Hell, at twenty-three, Derek could barely handle the weight of being the Alpha, and he had grown up as a wolf. Scott had barely been a wolf for four years, and he had all the responsibilities of an Alpha, as well as the responsibilities of being a young adult in this world. So, Derek didn’t ever fully expect Scott to make the perfect decisions and he would often times help the young man wherever he could. However, today, even Derek wasn’t sure what to do.   
  
“We know that the Druids aren’t armed with anything except their magic and a few supplies.” Derek offered up, trying to review the situation so they could think of some way out of this. “We destroyed their shelter, which means they don’t have any of the supplies they would need for any overly complicated spells and -”   
  
“I know now that they’re leaving the preserve.”   
  
Stiles. His voice rang out across Deaton’s clinic, Derek and Scott both looking to him. A small cut on his cheek was bleeding slowly, and he had various dark purple bruises littering his body. He sheepishly raised a hand to wave, pointedly not meeting Derek’s eyes.    
  
“Dude. What the fuck happened?” Scott asked, grabbing the first aid kit from underneath the front counter, Derek standing and staring at Stiles with hard eyes that asked the same question.   
  
“Well, Scotty. Funny story. I found the Druids. They were holed up in some makeshift shelter in the middle of the woods, and I tried to creep up on them.”   
  
“Tried?” Scott interrupted.

Stiles flushed. “Well, you see, apparently they were having a ceremony or an important ritual, something like that, and they were all really tuned into the woods, so they heard me creeping up on them.” He explained, eyes finally glancing to Derek. The older man saw a flicker of panic go through Stiles’s eyes, and Derek didn’t have to think too hard to figure out why. Stiles was always terrified of pissing Derek off. “They, uh, they got really mad. I managed to talk them down, though, and I explained that I was a part of the pack. I apologize for destroying their shit. That seemed to calm them down. It turns out they weren’t really here to attack the pack, they were just settling here for a few weeks while they’re relocating. They’re going to leave the lands tonight, though.” 

Scott furrowed his brow. “Why wouldn’t they just tell us that before? Could’ve avoided a lot of issues…”   
  
“I dunno. But, hey. Everything’s cool now!” Stiles grinned, his eyes flickering back to Derek again, who hadn’t spoken. “Uh. I’m going to go home now and get some ice, Scotty.” He told him, eyes still on his boyfriend. Derek was being dangerously quiet. He knew this threw Stiles, but at the current moment, what settled Stiles wasn’t his biggest priority. 

Scott nodded his head and gave his friend a half hug before he retreated into the back of the clinic, leaving Derek and Stiles alone in the agonizingly heavy silence. Finally, it was broken.   
  
“I asked you to not go. I don’t ask you for much, Stiles. I really don’t. Not unless it’s to keep you  **safe** . Do you not care? Do you just want to get yourself fucking killed out there, Stiles? You’re part of the pack and you’re important to it, but you’re not indestructible. Hell,  **we** aren’t.” Derek’s tone was one of anger, but there was also something beneath the anger and frustration that he felt. Fear. Fear laid beneath all of it. After all, everyone that Derek had ever cared about had gotten hurt, or died, or damaged beyond repair and for once, Derek had let himself care again, let himself love another human with all of his heart and soul. So the fact that Stiles was also so eager to rush into danger that could make Derek lose him forever...it killed Derek.    
  
“I care! But you can’t just treat me like I’m some little kid, Derek! I can help. I stopped everything from escalating tonight! I’ve proven I can fight but you keep pushing me to the sidelines. I’m not some weak, fragile human. I can help!”   
  
“How? How, Stiles? By getting yourself killed or captured? Every time something like this comes along, you get hurt, and it won’t always just be little bruises. You’re going to get seriously hurt and I can’t handle that.” The silence returned as the full weight of the night and of his fear hit Derek. He sighed, sitting back down in the chair he had been in and slumping, running his hand through his hair. Stiles frowned, crouching in front of him and taking his hands, forcing Derek to look at him.    
  
“Hey. I’m okay, okay? I’m sorry I didn’t listen to you.” Stiles’s tone had shifted from one of frustration to one of softness and kindness. As much as he wanted to say that Derek was wrong, he wasn’t. And he knew that despite Derek being right, it wouldn’t change anything. However, he knew that Derek had lost everyone, everything, and Stiles didn’t wanna be one of the things that Derek lost. He’d stick by his sourwolf forever. The lanky teenage boy shifted up and pressed a soft kiss into Derek’s forehead. “I’m sorry, Der.”

  
Derek finally managed to nod, letting Stiles pull him into a hug for a few moments. “Can we talk more tomorrow?” Stiles murmured into his hair. Another nod from the wolf.   
  
“I love you, Der.”   
  
“I love you, too.”

 

 

 


End file.
